Unit 73 - Sound

Unit 73 - Sound

What is sound?

• Aircon
• White
• NoiseOcean
• Breathing

Sounds are sine waves made from air waves.

When bongos are played, one of them creates a lower pitched sound than the other.

Sine waves are produced.

Elephants can hear from 5Hz to 10 KHz

Wavelength (length) and Amplitude (height)

Wavelength is measured in frequency (how frequently it happened)

Frequency is measured in Hertz (Hz)

Amplitude is measured in Lambda (λ)
Humans can hear between 20Hz and 20KHz

Pitch

Middle 'C' Hz? 261Hz
Oscilloscope

Vocals and Drums

Timbre

Tone Colour

Qualities of the sound

Vibration of the harmonics at the same time producing the pitch.

The strength of harmonics produce timbre.

Timbre - The combined strength of a sound and its harmonics.
Loudness
Level dB

• Voice - 5.5 PPM
• SFX - 4.5 PPM
• Music - 3.5 PPM

Avoid distortion

PPM:
 
VU:

dBs
Sound Source
Piano - How?
Music: Via us pressing keys on it. By pressing keys, we cause small hammers to hit their respective strings and thus cause them to vibrate and make a sound.
SFX: Foley - How?
Using objects and props in certain ways to mimic real-life sounds. For example, in the video clip below, a foley artist named David Ian, created various realistic sound effects by bashing two coconut halves together to mimic horse trotting, banging a pair of shoes together to create a footstep noise and pulling a detached door handle to imitate a gun cocking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0pOLukIB4s
Voice: How?
Voice Acting, performing by us as humans

Video Game Audio Breakdown - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOK1I8hhIHI
In this clip, the audio is entirely in CD quality, and the music does not play until part of the way into the video. Said music consists of loud drums, bass and eerie instruments that combine together to make a song that sounds both heroic and gothic at the same time. As for the sound effects, sword slashing, lightning, howling, water splashing, grunts from the player character and short musical jingles obtained through stock audio samples made by that have been used in extremely old movies such as 1931's Frankenstein (these sounds were most likely made in-house by humans with foley instruments) can be heard, and there is also a cut-scene near the end of the clip containing dialogue which is fully voice-acted by two human voice actors.
What is the purpose of sound in video games?
We put sound in video games to bring the game to life, to invoke emotions in the player when certain events take place and to also immerse the player in the game's setting and atmosphere. We may also use sound to tell the player as much as we can about the characters.

Examples of sound
Voice - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMTizJemHO8 - Castlevania: SotN > "What is a man?"
FX - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09mYh6d3irU - Final Fantasy VI > Sound effects
Music - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4VtxWRfPOk - Mega Man 2 > Wily Stage 1-2

How the player feels: happy, sad, angry - direction regarding emotion. Without sound, the game would feel barren and lifeless.

Psychology
Balance: Voice (5.5PPM), FX (4.5PPM) and Music (3.5PPM)
Calm: Sitting near a beautiful waterfall, the sun is shining bright, the birds are singing. No-one else is nearby except for all of the forest wildlife. Flowers are blooming all around you. You feel content, and at peace with nature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLnul4LOtfw - Great Fairy's Fountain (The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time) 
Timbre, emotion and mood
War zone - dangerous, storm
Onomatopoeic words
Walking around a zoo - animal noises

Audio Environment
Digetic
Effect (e.g: Luigi)
Non-Digetic
Interface (e.g: Mega Man Weapons)
Zone
Ambience (e.g SotN thunder)
Affect
Music (e.g: Zelda Overworld theme)

Clip: Super Metroid - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyTlrr-6ijs
Audio Environment:
Interface (Non-Digetic, cannot be heard by the player character): A clicking sound is made when you scroll through the save files, likely done to emulate the sound of tech-suit interface.
Effect (Digetic, can be heard by the player character): Blaster sounds, Samus jumping, roaring sounds, emergency sirens, all capture the sci-fi theme of the game.
Zone (Digetic): The rain that is found upon landing on Planet Zebes. This helps to communicate a very moody setting.
Affect (Non-Digetic): The music can range from being suspenseful to invoke a feeling of alertness in the player to being intense during situations such as boss fights to communicate a sense of danger.

Sound Sources?
Companies with sound libraries. Buy them.
Foley. Buy it.
Voice acting. Pay for it.
Software (e.g: Audacity, Pro Tools, Garage Band, Audition
This link contains a sound library consisting of mainly futuristic weapon sound effects - https://sonniss.com/sound-effects/future-weapons-sound-effects-library/
This link leads to the website for Feet First Sound Ltd, a sound company that specialise in providing foley sound effects. - http://www.feetfirstsound.co.uk/

Methodology of video game sound
Recording
FX
Microphone
Foley
Cardioid
Omni - Centre of a table (Several sources e.g: voices)
Bi-Directional - 2 sources (Interviewer/Interviewee)
416 - 
Methodology - (Plan)
Room with decent acoustics
Ideally, the ratio for the dimensions sizes of a recording studio would be as followed:
Height = 1, Length = 1.6, Width = 1.25

Cardioid Microphone:UWU

Omnidirectional Microphone:

Lossy/Lossless
File Size
.mp3
MPEG
.flac
.exe - GameMaker file, Lossy
.wav - PC
.aiff
.ac3 - Lossy, Dolby 2.0

Limitations?
Resources
Time
Budget
Intelligence/Imagination
Assets
                             /
RAM (storage)     /     GameMaker
CPU                    /     Monitoring (Safety)
SSD                   /     Adobe
                          /     Pro Tools (Cubase)
                         /     Logic
                        /
G.D Speakers
Wharfedale
Denon
Bose

Big Mic - Woofer, Bass, Low freq.
Medium Mic - Mid-range Speaker, Mid freq.
Little Mic - Tweeter, Treble, High freq.

Headphones
Immersive
AKD
Bad headphones = less immersive
 __ 5.5PPM
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Size matters, hardware for software
Lossless = under 500MB
Lossy = 50MB or less
Compression can affect the volume of certain sounds
G.D Create Visuals, media encoder
Space for audio, compression
Audio
File extensions

According to the screenshot above, one of the file extensions used for GD is .mp3. To record this sound, you will need a microphone in a padded room so that no other sound overlaps it. You may also use a real sword as a foley instrument so that you can properly mimic the sound in real life. An audio editing software such as Audacity may also help. Sword slashing is an effect sound. 

29th May 2019: SOUND TEST
READ THE QUESTION CAREFULLY

Describe - More like an analysis
Discuss - 2 sides to the argument

Legal Issues:
Copyright, (1) PEGI rating, GTA? - Is rated PEGI-18 in the UK, rated M for Mature in the US, which means that the game is intended for 17+-year-olds.
(2) Detail? (3) GTA advisory? - GTA contains violence and swearing
(4) Sound? Music? - Uses real songs by other artists, sound effects are sampled in-house and includes voice-acting
Player legal limits? 
Language? Effects (6)? Music (7)? Voice (5)?

GTA V is rated PEGI-18 in the UK and M for Mature in the US (which means that the game is intended for 17+-year-olds). This is because the game contains lots of violence, drug references, sex and bad language. 

Music Example: According to the article below by The Guardian, various songwriters have been targeting Fortnite by using new copyright laws to sue Epic Games over song royalties.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/apr/29/music-industry-takes-aim-at-fortnite-over-song-royalties

1. Technical Sound
2. Psychology of the player
3. Audio environment
4. Sound sources
5. Purpose of music
6. Legal Issues of sound (music)
7. Methodology
8. Compression of gaming audio! Lossy and lossless
9. Audio limitations (sampling), platforms
10. Recording systems?
Discuss, with examples

Limitations:
https://stephencarrgames.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/sound-music-audio-limitations-of-game-platforms/

Although the quality of sound has improved in games over the years, audio limitations still exist. As audio technology, including both recording and output equipment, becomes more advanced, recorded sounds can become much more accurate and playback can be far clearer than they were previously. However, there will always be limitations. In the case of computer games, some of the reasons for these limitations include:

Sound cards – Less advanced sound cards produce less advanced sounds. Sound cards have limitations on the number of audio streams that can be played through them at any time.

Processing power – A lack of processing power or too much processing power given to the sound will take away from the other parts of the game. For example, trying to have too high a sample rate can diminish the performance of the graphics card, making games run slower (or “lag”). In other words, the Central Processing Unit must be powerful enough to not only play the music and sound but also any other features being produced at the same time. In the case of computer games, this can include graphics, online play, player input, etc.

Storage devices – Storage devices, such as CDs and Blu-Ray discs have limitations on the amount of data that can be stored. In the case of computer games, all the music and sounds must be stored with the rest of the game – 3D models and environments, for example – limiting the amount of space available for it.

Speakers & Headphones – Depending on the output of the sound of speakers and headphones, the produced sound may not be as crisp or accurate as the composer intended. Older speakers may have a grainier sound when compared to newer speakers, for example. It could also be a flaw such as the game’s sound being designed for surround speakers and being played through regular speakers.

very solid notes with a large multitude of definitions and examples. good stuff.

~JoshOWO.

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¦ 5th Time Planning research                                                                                                  ¦

¦ Foley game designed                                                                                                            ¦

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For my foley sound effect, I will be producing a sound that is heard upon landing on the ground feet-first after a jump, since it would be one of the main sounds for a platformer (regardless of whether the game in question is 2D or 3D). To produce this sound, I will be banging a pair of shoes together and recording it with a cardioid microphone, since the sound is heard in the case of the character wearing shoes. I will need to make sure that I hit them together exceptionally hard so that I can more accurately capture the extra volume of a jump landing compared to that of a regular footstep sound. I may also take some action (such as possibly using Audacity to remove background noise) in order to make sure the quality of the sound recorded is improved.

Essay:

What is the sound?

Analyse the sound.

Methodology?

IEZA of the game, where is your sound?

The game that I recorded my sound for is going to be a 3D platformer. The sound that I made for this game is the impact of landing feet-first on the ground after a jump, which I created by recording myself banging a pair of smart shoes together, and for each the first few recordings, I banged them together once and for each the second few recordings, I quickly banged them together twice. I had some help from Aidan who held the recorder for me since I needed both hands in order to produce the foley properly as well as Harry Lewis, who recorded a video of me producing the foley to use as my evidence.

I also decided to bring in my own microphone for recording in case they were not already supplied, only to realise that the mic would not work on its own without being plugged into a recorder first. The sound itself is intended to be in the Effect section of the audio environment diagram, since it is a non-ambient sound effect that CAN be heard by the player and is created by a character action.

After recording the impact sound in the recording studio, I then proceeded to download the recorded sound from LEARN and open it up in the audio software known as Audacity. I used this software to edit the sound by deleting the recording of me speaking (which I originally did in order to provide the introduction and outro) and then silencing the background audio in between sound production in order to prevent the sounds I wanted from being drowned out. I also deleted a few of the recorded segments where i recorded the same sound repeatedly, and left two of the recordings in (these were my favourites).